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Escape from the bunker

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

4/18/12, 9:05 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:16 PM CET

A new building in Luxembourg,

The ministers and civil servants who traipse across to Luxembourg this month for meetings of the Council of Ministers are to be rewarded for their pains. The Council will for the first time meet in the l’Alcide de Gasperi conference centre.

Construction of the centre was initially scheduled by the government of Luxembourg for completion in 2008, but the timetable has slipped just a little. In the meantime, since 2002 the ministerial meetings – which take place in Luxembourg during the months of April, June and October – have been held up the road, in a building unadmiringly dubbed ‘the bunker’, which merits no more respectful title.

The first ministers to use the new conference centre will be the foreign ministers on 23 April, with the agriculture and fisheries ministers following later in the week.

Luxembourg is well prepared for the future expansion of the European Union, or perhaps for the fracturing of some existing member states., since the main meeting room has enough space for 100 people to sit around the table. One observer, contemplating the oval space inside the table, likened it to a roller disco in the 1970s (aah! those heady days when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing used to treat his fellow EU leaders to a performances of numbers from Starlight Express).

The Council will be renting the space from the Luxembourgeois government, but the rent has yet to be agreed.